Takata accepted the second container. “They will have to do.”
He held both jars out to Shun. The small dragon bared his two long front fangs, and sunk them into each of the cheese cloths. A thick, syrupy liquid shot from the dragon’s teeth until the jars were nearly full.
When Shun released his bite, Takata held the containers out to Tyler. “I trust you know what to do with these?”
The veterinarian nodded. “Boil one into a drinkable form, use the other as a salve.” He took the jars, almost reverently. “Thank you. I’m honored.”
Shun fluttered his golden wings, and returned to his human form. “That’s all I can do. His wing will mend if you continue to apply the venom, and he’ll need the healing draught by tonight.”
“I’ll get right on it.” Tyler turned to his daughter. “Elaina, can you help me?”
Shun watched them fade into the darkness before turning to Connor. “Joesephutus needs to rest. If he exerts himself in the slightest, he’ll undo the healing I’ve done. Then he won’t be able to fly, let alone fight.”
“It won’t be enough,” Takata said.
Connor gripped the young dragon’s shoulder. “Your generation lacks faith.”
“We’ve never known an age where we had hope, let alone faith that our lives could improve.”
Connor spun them both in Puff’s direction. “This is what faith and hope looks like. Be warned, though. The fight may not be only his to win. We’re going to need to be creative. Especially with this stubborn little buck.”
Puff cocked his head and stared at his friend. No one needed Nik to translate to understand the little dragon’s what-the-frig stare.
Smiling, Connor turned to Pops. “I hate to ask this, but do you, by any chance, have a dragon spear?”
Pops smiled rivaled that of the dragon. “I am old, but I’m not foolish. This is, after all, the Seventeen Year.”
He motioned to the circle of men around them, who each pulled a foot-long, thin metallic rod from their backpacks. Moving as a cohesive unit, the men joined their individual pieces into a long spear that shimmered in the torchlight. Nanna handed Pops the final piece: a sharpened point that clicked onto the end.
A hush fell over the group. The two golden dragons stepped back. Puff gaped, his eyes wide. Above them, the larger gold, Pijeth, howled.
“What is that?” Anna asked.
“The dragon spear.” Nik shuddered. “The point has been mounted on our wall my entire life.” His brow furrowed as he stared at the shiny metal. “I never in a million years thought anyone else knew where the remaining parts were, let alone know how to rebuild it.” He tore his eyes away from the spear and looked at Anna. “According to myth, the dragon spear evened the odds when the dragons started hunting people. It is one of the few weapons capable of inflicting enough pain to immobilize a dragon.”
Anna turned to Connor. “What do you want with that?”
“Simple.” Connor pointed to the cave, looking at Pops. “I need you to bring Joesephutus back into the cave, and keep him there. Use the spear if you need to.”
Puff roared.
Nik held his ears as if his head might explode. “I don’t think I need to tell you guys he’s not happy about this.”
Connor pointed at the cave. “Go. The gold said you needed rest, and rest you will get.”
Puff grumbled at Nik, but the Kotahi just shook his head. “The big guy is right, boss. No matter what happens, you need your strength or you’re as good as dead.”
Nik made way as his grandfather took the weapon and pointed the shimmering tip at the clouds. “I will not dishonor you by using this, Great One. But I humbly ask that you do the right thing and listen to the mighty green.”
Anna exhaled as the small dragon looked at her with sorrowful eyes. He growled in an un-menacing tone, before the two boys flexed into dragon form and helped the crystal dragon up the sloped rocks, and back into the safety of the cave.
Connor breathed a huge relief-filled sigh once Puff was out of sight, and the boys had returned to their human form.
Pijeth jumped from his rocky perch. With a flash of yellow light, he shrank into a man as he approached. Anna realized that he was older than the twins by over a decade, or probably more like seventeen years, now that she thought about it.
He addressed his brothers. “The two of you get out of here quickly.”
“Why?” Takata asked.
Connor’s eyes narrowed. “One thing that will improve with your age, is your hearing.”
They both tilted their ears to the slowly brightening sky. One paled, then the other. A dragon roared in the distance.
“Get out of here. Now!” Pijeth pushed them both.
The boys ran, shimmering into dragon form as they jumped into the air, already batting their wings. Pijeth followed close behind his younger brothers.
The roar came closer. Anna’s ears rang as the Maori clambered around her, grabbing torches and making their way back into the cave.
Puff roared within.
“Your king calls for you, my queen,” Connor shouted, directing the adolescent Maori to the human-sized door as he threw a bolder to the top of the pile, partially enclosing the dragon-sized entrance.
Anna scrambled toward the door, but each step triggered a new sense of panic.
She recognized that roar. The gray dragons were coming.
What if they got here and she was trapped inside that cave? She would have nowhere to go.
Another roar bellowed in the distance, and she stepped back, allowing a woman with three children through the door. She couldn’t go in there. They were coming for her. She needed to get away. She hugged the side of the mountain, watching another family of Maori flee within.
Nik seemed to be fighting with Connor in the center of the clearing, when their eyes drew to her.
Connor howled at her to run.
Nik screamed, “What are you doing? Go!”
Her lips parted to answer, but her words caught in her throat. Nothing made sense anymore— not fantasy nor reality, not standing on a mountain, and certainly not trapping herself inside a cavern. Turning from the opening, Anna ran, leaving the cave, dragons, and the roaring horror in the sky behind her. Her shoes padded on the ground until the trees engulfed her in total darkness.
18
The girl was out of her godforsaken mind.
“Get inside!” Connor yelled at Nik and the remaining Maori.
Nik fled toward the door, but a gargantuan double-column of gray-scaled legs slammed down within the clearing, blocking his escape.
He froze, dimly aware that the remaining humans had stopped running as well. Something whispered within him, keeping him calm, but also still and posed like a doll.
Heart thumping against his ribs, Nik’s gaze rose over a rounded, gray belly and up to a mouth of teeth dripping with clear goo. The dragon’s wings still fluttered in the air, massive gray sails reaching across the clearing and nearly sweeping the trees on either side. The eyes, yellow and veined, flickered in the torchlight and bore through his soul.
Every instinct in his body shouted to run, to save himself, but no human in the clearing moved.
The beast’s gaze drew to Connor, and the weight of a million planets left Nik’s frame. Free from whatever had held all of them, Elaina took two steps toward the cave before being stopped by her father. The veterinarian’s gaze caught each of them, and he widened his eyes, warning them not to move.
Of course. If they ran to the mountain, they would give away the hidden cavern, and everyone inside.
Many of their faces twisted. A few lips quivered. A man prayed. It was the most any of them could do.
“Hello, Gale.” Connor folded his arms and looked up. He feigned boredom well. “Are you lost? I can’t believe you’d risk flying so far from the mountain this close to dawn.”
The dragon arched his back and shrank. The torches flickered over his ashen hide as it faded to a light, peachy complex
ion that paled next to Connor’s dark, Caribbean tone.
Naked except a hairy chest, back, and legs, looking no less the predator as he had in the shape of a dragon, Gale advanced on Connor. A red, scabbed nub held the place where his right index finger should be.
Was that the broken talon the gold dragon had turned into a necklace? If so, Gale had made the killing blow himself. If Nik remembered his Draconic history well enough, that was a big no-no in the Seventeen Year.
Gale scanned the area. “Where is the runt?”
Connor widened his eyes, somehow managing not to look at the cave. “You mean you haven’t found him yet? By now I thought you’d have ripped the girl out of his corpse’s arms and secured your crown.” Connor drew a Maori woman to him and whispered into her ear. “I, on the other hand, have been enjoying all the outside world has to offer.” He kissed her neck and fondled her breasts. The woman clung to him, but her horror-filled eyes never left the newcomer.
Gale narrowed his gaze. “You can’t mate with that one, idiot. She can’t bare your child.”
Connor laughed. “It’s not all about procreation. It’s about the pleasure. You grays need to stop and enjoy the sensations these simple creatures can give you.”
Gale sneered. “That is why the greens are always below us. You are misguided by base needs that lead you nowhere.”
“That is where we differ. There is nowhere I’d rather be, than between a willing set of thighs.” He kissed the girl deeply.
Gale growled. “This hunt has never been about pleasure.”
Connor released the kiss. “I am aware of that, but if you thought for a single instant that I was your competition, I’d be dead already. So who is the wiser, the dragons bleeding out on the hillside, or the one listening to the moans of the woman he nestles himself inside?”
Gale angled a brow. “Fair enough. You’ve never been a problem, but you do have a well-known friendship with a small dragon that has recently caused me a considerable amount of irritation.”
Connor shrugged. “What of it? I’m not the one standing in your way.” Sniffing the woman’s hair, he slipped his hand in her pants.
“So I see,” Gale said. “But just in case.” He reached his arm back as if to hit Connor, and shifted into dragon form with blurring speed.
Connor pushed the woman to safety, ruining the seconds he had to shift and defend himself. She hit the ground at the same moment the gray dragon’s talon met flesh.
Nik cried out as Connor’s blood-soaked body fell; and he froze as Gale tuned on him and the rest of the Maori. The dragon howled and spouted a beam of fire into the air, curling the outer leaves on the surrounding trees. Nik turned from the scorching heat, but he knew he was at the beast’s mercy.
Elaina and Tyler gathered the people into a huddled mass and waited for the flames to engulf them.
Instead, the dragon roared and took two booming steps toward the helpless Maori. The group scattered as the beast jabbed a claw into their midst. A scream echoed through the pre-dawn light. Nik stood, helpless, as Gale hoisted a thrashing blonde girl into the air.
“Elaina!” Tyler cried, reaching for his daughter.
The dragon garbled something in Draconic before he flapped his wings, extinguishing several torches as he took back to the air.
Nik shuddered in disbelief, even as the roar of the dragon told him the creature had left them far behind.
Tyler fell to his knees, his arms reaching toward the sky as if he could magically will his daughter’s return. There was nothing he could do, though. There was nothing any of them could do.
Stunned, Nik surveyed the clearing, realizing the torches were no longer the only source of light.
The sky had turned purple as light threatened to peek over the treetops. Dawn had come, and was probably to only reason any of them were still alive.
As Tyler dropped his face into his hands, Nik knew at least one of them might have preferred the dragon’s fire over being left in this clearing. He took a step toward the veterinarian, hoping maybe a simple touch or a kind word might ease his suffering, when a woman behind him cried out, “He’s bleeding!”
Connor. Shit.
Nik bolted toward the shifted dragon’s motionless form.
The woman Connor had kissed knelt beside him. “He pushed me out of the way. He saved me.”
Tears ran down her cheeks and dripped onto a blouse covered in red splatter. Nik had no idea if the blood was hers, or Connor’s.
Puff’s roar blasted through the clearing, but Nik wasn’t sure if the sound existed, or if he only heard the scream in his own head. Either way, he closed his eyes, trying to hide the vision of Connor’s blood from his dragon.
The damage had been done, though. A resounding boom rattled the side of the mountain. Fire and rock shot from the cave into the clearing. Puff emerged, eyes wide as he galloped to his fallen friend.
*Quenor!* Puff howled, dirt piling at his feet as he stopped beside him.
The crystal dragon lapped his friend’s wounds, but Connor didn’t stir.
Nik’s chest clenched, his pulse quickened in time with his dragon, but his blood thickened when the gored man didn’t stir.
*No!* Puff bat Connor’s side with his snout.
The wedge in Nik’s chest folded over until a sob formed in his own throat.
*Wake up!* Again, Puff slammed against Connor, but this time, the man groaned.
Nik released the breath he’d been holding to ward off the pain and steeled himself, stepping back from the blood-soaked soil.
A deep gash ran from Connor’s ankle to his hip. A white area peeked through the blood as Puff continued to lick at the wound. Nik wretched, realizing it was a bone.
Another slice ran across Connor’s stomach with near surgical precision. Dragon talons were just as sharp as they looked.
The girl kneeling beside him pulled off her blouse. “We need to put pressure on these wounds.”
Nik eyed the shirt, wondering how clean it was after two days in the cave, but he supposed it was the best that they had. The Maori milled about, many stumbling from the cave and squinting in the dawn light. Some brought water to Connor’s lips, then spilled the remainder over the wounds to wash them.
*If he dies because of me…*
“Shut up,” Nik said. “He’s not going to die.”
The girl holding the rag looked at Nik, then glanced at Puff, recognizing that Nik wasn’t speaking to her. Which was good, because he didn’t have time to explain.
He grabbed two water bottles held by the waiting children and started cleaning the slice in Connor’s stomach. Just because it wasn’t bleeding as bad, didn’t mean it wasn’t as severe.
A scream echoed over the trees. Puff lifted his head and looked at Nik before scanning the crowd. *Where is Anna?*
Oh, shit.
She’d run away. She’d never made it into the cave.
Nik opened his lips to speak, but the look in the dragon’s eyes told him the dragon had already read his thoughts. Puff looked at his dying friend, his mind in a whirl of conflict.
“I got him,” Nik said. “I won’t let him die. I promise.”
Puff nodded his silver snout before backing between the children bringing supplies. He took one last look at his dying friend before galloping into the woods.
Connor groaned again. Nik shared a glance with the woman helping. Her eyes shared his fear. They’d done the right thing by sending the dragon away, but neither one of them knew if they could uphold their promise to keep this man alive.
19
Anna pawed at the thin branch that had stopped her fall and kicked her feet, scrambling for purchase. She closed her eyes and took a single, steadying breath. People who panicked died. All she needed was a small ledge, a rock, anything to support her weight.
She opened her eyes and took in the crevices nature had etched into the sandy slope of the mountain, the three thin saplings jutting out from the mountainside a few hundred feet below, an
d the rocky bottom a few thousand feet further.
When the gray dragon flew away, she thought she was safe. Then she’d slipped. She was going to die anyway, alone on this cliff, a victim of her own stupid clumsiness.
A panicked roar echoed through the air— a dragon. Her dragon.
“I’m here. Help!”
Puff’s snout pushed between two massive trees several yards above her head. He sniffed twice before he looked down. His eyes widened as he garbled something in Draconic.
“I’m falling.” Anna closed her eyes, sickened that the last words she might say to him were something so obvious that even little Dixie would be able to figure it out, let alone a sentient dragon.
A fizzle of smoke trickled from his left nostril as he forced one arm down to her through the two trees. Anna suppressed a whimper. Even if she dared reach for his claws there was still a foot of empty air between them.
Puff snarled. His rear talons slipped and gravel peppered Anna’s face as he pushed against the trees. Unable to gain footing on the slope, he tried once more to force his thick torso between the mighty sentries, but they held firm, as they probably had for hundreds of years.
A small pop echoed through the air as one of the roots anchoring the branch Anna clung to pulled out of the mountainside. She looked again for something, anything to support her feet, but she only managed to make more gravel and small rocks fall until they were indiscernible in the valley below.
Puff howled and reached through the branches once more. Desperation cascaded through the red fury in his eyes. His gaze faltered before he growled through clenched teeth and drew back, out of sight.
Wind whipped through Anna’s hair, mocking her sudden solitude. The morning chill settled deep within, preparing her for the inevitable.
Another root snapped, spraying sand across her face.
“Puff!” She whimpered as the branch cut further into her hands.
She was supposed to be old and gray when she died, surrounded by friends and family. Not young. Not alone.
Sirens and Scales Page 369
